The following response regarding productivity improvements was provided by California State University, Maritime Academy

Productivity: What exactly do we mean?

Language sometimes causes us problems, and the term "productivity" is a word that carries some political baggage and could mean a variety of things that pertain to the delivery of knowledge, learning, and cost control. Productivity, when discussed in management circles, is closely linked with efficiency: it has to do with the ratio of outputs (or outcomes) to inputs. The concept presupposes methods of measuring inputs and outputs. As I understand recent system-wide discussions, the major motivation for the focus on productivity is to prepare for "tidal wave II" in a tight fiscal setting-getting more output from our layouts. At the same time there is an interest in changing our instructional emphasis from "seat-time" to learning; the suggestion has been made that this switch could have a positive impact on productivity, but at this time we have little evidence to conclude things one way or the other. While managers consider the term a descriptor of organizational performance, faculty and other employee organizations tend to interpret the word with more sinister colorations.

In the CSU-wide discussions in which I have participated, several meanings of productivity have been used, none of them overtly defined.

faculty workload productivitys this looks something like verified "weighted teaching unit (WTU)" per full-time equivalent faculty member (FTEF); WTU/FTEF is the figure of merit. The idea is founded in the notion of seat time, and focuses on the number of hours a faculty member spends in the classroom each week. Student contact productivity the number of student contact hours per week (WSCH) generated by a full-time equivalent faculty member; WSCH/FTEF. This measure has historically been used to take into consideration the number of students in each of the classes a faculty member teaches and thus has been associated with seat time, but this would not have to be the case. learning productivity. the amount of learning that a faculty member facilitates per unit of time; presumably this would involve measurement of the amount learned per student times the number of students served by a FTEF per week; Weekly Learning Units per Faculty member, or WLU/FTEF.

Switching the Paradigm (with apologies to Dr. Munitz)

When moving from notions like workload or student contact productivity to learning productivity, we must note that a step is taken away from traditional accounting capabilities, and we enter a new arena in optimizing decisions (and I use these traditional management terms with some skepticism). At the present we know how to calculate WTUs and we know how many students are enrolled in each class, and we can count FTEFs. We have many ideas about the measurement of learning and in some fields there is consensus about the elements of the educated student. For the most part we have not set up the accounting systems to track this information where it does exist, but we can do this with relative ease. Putting aside the transition issues (keeping two sets of books for awhile), we need to be aware of two implied issues. One has to do with simply getting efficiency up-achieving the goal of serving more students with essentially stable resources. The larger one has to do with new judgments that will have to be made in making decisions about investments in learning productivity. As we switch the focus to learning we will measure something like WLU/FTEF and WLU is not a concept as easily confined as WTU or WSCH. The reason has to do with the notion of the "quality" of learning. Let me provide an example to illustrate these two matters: Professor Jones teaches Seamanship I, a conventional classroom based course. She divides it into reasonable "learning units (LU)" and devises means for measuring when students have mastered each LU. She changes the delivery system to emphasize continuous tutoring sessions and individualized computer assisted components such that each student can progress at his/her individual pace. She can now certify learning by student. If we assume that all who passed Professor Jones's course in its original form learned the same amount as those who successfully complete all of the LUs in the course in its new format. then the increase in learning productivity comes by moving more students through the course in a given period. Thus the only way to get productivity up is to either enroll more students with Dr. Jones each semester, or vacate the semester stricture and continuously place students into Dr. Jones course in an "open entry/open exit" format. Attaining either of these will involve major changes in incentive and culture (and no doubt a lot of other things). Now comes a technological breakthrough and Professor Jones comes to her Provost and points out that with new simulation equipment Seamanship I can be taught in an entirely more effective manner because students will actually perform mariner functions in the (yes, Barry) virtual environment and be evaluated through hands-on rather than paper and pencil exercises. The simulator supported course would generate students with a more profound mastery of the skills involved. The costs to obtain, maintain and operate the simulator are large. If we conclude that the costs are increasing, but the learning-recognizing the increase in the quality of the learninq-is increasing even more than proportionately. then learning productivity is increasing (maybe even a lot): but costs are going up sharply. In other words, in education we will sometimes redefine what we mean by learning and when we do this the numerator (learning) in our productivity calculation will go up, but almost certainly so will the denominator (cost) associated with these gains. This will be especially the case in situations where cross institutional competition exists.

Efforts at the California Maritime Academy

As the CSU's smallest institution-and one involved with professional education at that we are very much aware of efficiency issues. We believe that technology probably provides the best hope for administrative and learning productivity increases. In this regard we are following three complimentary tracks.

The first has to do with the introduction of administrative technology which has the promise to raise the output of the current

I) staff with only modest increases in investment in software. Some of this has to do with refinements in the manner in which we are operating the FRS system. These changes will allow for speedier, more accurate financial reports, and will especially help in achieving prompt annual closings of the books. We are also customizing our Champlain student records software to make it compatible with the enrollment software operating in CSU headquarters. This will eliminate the work currently being performed by hand. We will soon have completed a project which will properly link the CMA Library with the other libraries of the CSU. All of these projects have the promise of reducing the cost of the transactions performed. Second, we are investing in communication and instructional infrastructure. At the present time only our Administration Building is properly equipped for CSU-Net. This summer our faculty offices and library will be hard-wired into this high-speed system. This will allow: 1) the library to operate at increased speed and with improved reliability in finalizing its connections to information sources; 2) the faculty offices will be on-line for the first time along with several administrative offices; 3) our instructional computer lab to be linked to the Internet; and 4) ports to be installed in the Classroom Building which will allow on-line access for classroom instructional purposes. In addition we are upgrading the computing hardware in our instructional computer lab to a Pentium standard; this will permit fuller use of our newly installed Local Area Network, and the use of individualized remedial mathematics (and possibly reading) software. We are installing computer and projection equipment in an initial classroom such that this room will be capable of supporting fully mediated instruction. We are continuing the development of a small, specialized computer laboratory which is designed to support very large, complex systems simulation software for our Mechanical and Facilities Engineering Programs. Third, we are investing very large amounts in state-of-the art, very high fidelity maritime and engineering simulation. All of this type of simulation attempts to provide the student with real equipment set in an environment that as far as possible resembles the real world. This includes: 1) further extension of our recently installed Full Mission Bridge Simulator to include new scenario software and a curriculum modified into Learning Units (as discussed above); 2) the installation of a Marine Steam Power Plant Simulator-arguably the finest in the world which will support a large number of courses in the Facilities and Mechanical Engineering Programs; 3) the design and installation of the world's first "simulated and live" Global Marine Distress and Safety System (GMDSS) simulator this is a device designed to train students in various voice and electronic communications systems now available on ships and it has the capability to operate either in a simulated (for introductory purposes) mode or a live (for advanced training) mode.

In Summary

We have not really clarified language with respect to our productivity efforts and this will impact our ability to achieve worthy goals. Depending upon how we describe things we can achieve productivity increase yet be more costly per student served. We need to speak clearly, I believe, about the differences in traditional productivity measures and those we would like to introduce that emphasize learning.

At the California Maritime Academy we are spreading our bets: some of our efforts have a high probability of resulting in cost decreases; some we are not sure about but think the chances are reasonable; and some of our investment will go into learning enhancements which will definitely drive costs up.

1. This excludes a concept that has frequently arisen in discussion but which has been particularly ambiguous: degree productivity: this would refer to some measure where

degrees are the output; the figure of merit is either time related (time per degree) or cost related ($ per degree) or course (Carnegie units per degree) or I suppose learning related (some measure of knowledge per degree).